Auditor’s Guide to Information Systems Auditing

Preface

In today’s business environment, computers are continuing the revolution started in the 1950s. Size and capacity of the equipment grows on an exponential curve, with the reduction in cost and size ensuring that organizations take advantage of this to develop more effective and responsive systems, which allow them to seek to gain competitive advantage by interfacing more closely with their customers.

Net technologies such as electronic data interchange (EDI), electronic funds transfers (EFTs), and E-commerce have fundamentally changed the nature of business itself and, as a result, organizations have become more computer dependent. The radical changes to business are matched only by their impact on society.

It has become impossible for today’s enterprises of any size and in any market sector to exist without computers to assist with their fundamental business operations. Even the old adage that “we can always go back to manual operations” is today a fallacy. The nature of today’s business environment obviates that option. Even the smallest businesses have found that the advent of personal computers (PCs) with increased capabilities and processing speed, while at the same time reduced pricing and sophisticated PC software, has revolutionized the concept of what a small business is.

In order for organizations to take full advantage of the new facilities that computers can offer, it is important that their systems can be controlled and are dependable. They require that their auditors ...